Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 – Commander's ChallengeReview

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Half the expansion at half the price.

By Jeff Haynes

In March, Electronic Arts released its expansion to Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 on the PC. Called Uprising, the exclusive digital distribution pack provided four new mini-campaigns that partially expanded the stories of the three main factions of the game and provided a prequel tale to one of the more powerful units in the game. It also provided a set of strategy based challenges designed to test your skills against tough odds. For a long time, it appeared as though this extra content would remain locked away from the consoles, but EA just recently released Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 – Commander's Challenges on XBLA, providing these bonus tests as a stand alone, download based experience independent of the game itself. For single player C&C fans, this is a pretty good test of your skills, provided that you can deal with some control and information issues and a less than perfect visual transfer from the PC.

While there is an intro movie with the barest bones of a plot, there really isn't much of a storyline behind Commander's Challenges. Perhaps EA thought that the four mini-campaigns just didn't work well and decided to cut them from the download. Instead, the concept is simple – as a commander with Futuretech, an arms manufacturer within the Red Alert Universe, your company has "acquired" the buildings and the basic units of the Soviets, Allies and Rising Sun. However, you aren't given access to the full tech tree at the start of the game; to expand your arsenal, you'll need to take on the various generals of each faction wherever they may be running operations around the world. This means that you'll fight across everything from floating fortresses to frozen tundra. On top of that, you'll have various scenarios facing you, from defeating two rivals at once to eliminating hordes of augmented commando units and repelling incoming attacks from enemies that surround your base. To start your march to glory after you've selected a mission, you select the faction you want to fight as, using their abilities and units against your enemies. By defeating them in the fifty challenges within the game (which are broken up into side and main missions), you essentially recover the schematics for a new kind of soldier or vehicle that can be used in the next skirmish against your enemies. The Commander's Challenges also include the new weapons and units from the Uprising expansion, so you'll have access to the Giga-Fortress, Cryo-Legionnaire or Desolator units once you unlock them after battle.

Your map will give you a list of completed and available missions.

Defeating the generals and completing a mission can be a feat by itself if you can't recognize the patterns the enemy is using to attack you or if you choose a faction that doesn't have the adequate units to repel or counter incoming strikes. Commander's Challenge further ramps up the difficulty by throwing in a par time to complete the mission by, which also tracks your progress towards defeating your enemy. Coming close to or besting the time provided lets you upload your best time to the leaderboards, as well as provides you with bonus cash that can be brought over from one mission to another and used as an emergency fund when your money is running low. Clearly, this adds an extra level of complexity by giving you a goal to defeat opponents by, and allows you to replay a mission to attempt to beat your best time.

There are some issues that wind up holding Commander's Challenge back from being an incredible game, however. First of all, there's poor explanation surrounding some features within this console version of the game – facets that were much better implemented within the PC version. For example, the emergency cash feature actually looked like a flashing sign or button that could be triggered during dire circumstances to potentially turn the tide of battle. In the 360 version, this has been reduced to a bland icon that doesn't particularly stand out as something that you need or can trigger to save you when you're having trouble. Another issue is the lack of the glossary which provided video playback of units as well as an explanation of their various abilities so you could quickly get up to speed on what each unit did. While there's a tutorial that provides the very basic controls you need to play and a basic text description for some powers, there's nothing that fully explains what units can do or gives a sense of how they can be used to counter attacks, meaning that newcomers (and vets that haven't checked out the expansion before) will be in for some trial and error as they get accustomed to the gameplay. Considering that the game places a premium on the time it takes to beat a mission, having a bottleneck assimilating your units with your play style feels rather clunky.

Use brute force or cunning skill to defeat your opponents.

Once again, the Commandstick control scheme for the console isn't particularly the best, especially when you're forced to react to multiple attacks coming from all sides and you have trouble isolating exactly which unit you want to highlight because it keeps sliding around the map. The pointer feels slow and unresponsive compared to a mouse, which moves around maps much faster and lets you leap from one part of the battlefield to the other. While snapping to radar events is useful, it doesn't provide that immediate sense of speed that you can sometimes need to respond to attacks. On top of this issue, there's also slowdown that happens when you've got too many units on the field, a large amount of destruction that happens at once, or because there's a hefty amount of visuals to render. While the environments are bright, varied and vibrant, there's quite a bit of pixilation going on, along with screen tearing and flicker that pops up. Also, for some reason, the live-action video transfer of the generals taunting you or reacting to their loss appears washed out. At least the sound quality is excellent, with the large and quite excellent soundtrack and sound effects making their way into the game. The lone knock on the audio is the repetitive dialogue from the troops, which will make you mute the TV before you hear them affirm an order for the fifth or sixth time without any variety to their speech.

The Verdict

As a single player experience, the commander's challenges are a good way to test your skills, pitting you against a variety of enemies and plunging you into battles with limited resources to see just how good a strategy player you are. Taking what is arguably the most compelling segment of the Uprising pack and releasing it on its own, players will have hours of play ahead of them as they work on and refine their strategy to dominate the three factions of the Red Alert Universe. However, they'll also have to deal with a less than perfect control scheme, a lack of unit information and visual issues to enjoy these strategy brainteasers.

7.5PresentationThere's no story to speak of, but you don't need one to destroy units. Better info on what your units can do, particularly the expansion pack troops, shouldn't be left to trial and error.

7GraphicsColorful, but with a ton of pixilation and screen tearing scattered around. The video is also washed out, making characters look extremely strange.

8SoundThe soundtrack and voice acting is still as solid as ever, although the repetitive dialogue can be annoying.

7.5GameplayThere's a lot of missions to play through, but you'll have to deal with a less than perfect control scheme, limited unit info and figuring out the best forces to fend off enemies to be successful.

7Lasting AppealThis is a single player only experience, so don't look for multiplayer. The addition of par times helps expand the replayability a little, but once you've beaten a mission, you might not replay them.